David Pittard Blog: The 2014 Season is upon us!

Well… the eve of the 2014 season is upon us! The traditional opening to the British motorsport calendar at Brands Hatch kicks off this weekend… and finally I can say I will be a part of it!

2014 brings a new challenge, stepping up to the new Ginetta GT4 Supercup supporting the British Touring Cars! This challenge is something I have been working towards since starting my racing career in 2010, the crowds, the publicity, the competition and I am in the perfect place to make my debut!

It has been a long time since I have been in a race car, Brands Hatch on the 10th of August to be precise and it has been a long but successful winter (including jet setting to Abu Dhabi testing for Carlin in GP3) forming partnerships to make the 2014 possible! I am proud to say that I will be supported by Sears Morgan Accountancy, Jongleurs Comedy Club, Bedfordshire Breweries, Metartec, Berkley Sports Media and KX Energy this season, I cannot thank them enough as without them I wouldn’t be on the grid!

Coming back to being in the perfect place to make my debut, I am lucky enough to be a part of the KX Akademy this year, a support scheme to help aspiring professional racing drivers both on and off track with the support of the most successful British Touring Car Drivers in history, Jason Plato. The scheme aims to help drivers with all the aspects to become a professional driver, including fitness, media training, building brands, social media and a bursary as well as association to the KX brand at BTCC meetings. We’ve already had 2 mentoring days, 1 at Pro Performance sports consultancy where we were physically put to the test and at Base Performance Simulators to develop our communication skills with our race engineers. My experience with that can be read here: http://www.davidpittard.co.uk/my-first-kx-mentoring-days/

Pittard joins the GT4 Supercup grid after a year in the Ginetta GT5 Challenge (Credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography)

The new Ginetta GT4 Supercup boasts a very competitive grid! 4 champions from previous years in all of the Ginetta championships come together in 1, meaning it will be a very close year! Having had a very positive run at Rockingham last Thursday I am confident in our pace and set up. The SV Racing team is new to the championship this year however with the help of previous KX Akademy driver and GT4 Supercup race winner Rob Boston we will be up to speed right away and I am excited to work with such an experienced racer such as Rob.

Expectations for the weekend are wide open currently. Having not tested against any of the current drivers it will be in qualifying where we find out where we start! I hope to make 3 finishes and if lady luck is on our side bag a podium in the reverse grid race 3!

I will be promoting the KX brand at the circuit this year, firstly my #KaptureKX competition, which had great success covering the BTCC Media day, will be running over the race weekend! The competition is aimed at anyone with a camera to snap a pic of one of the KX Akademy drivers and tweet it into #KaptureKX, the winner will win a signed, framed A4 print of their image! Details can be found here: http://www.davidpittard.co.uk/kapture-kx-photo-competition/

Secondly the KX Akademy along with Jason Plato will be at the Kentagon on Saturday night at 18:30, so make sure to pop down to see and hear what the new recruits have to say!